An Ode to Community Within West Philadelphia
A brief history of a collaborative West Philadelphia:
The original inhabitants of the Philadelphia area were the Lenape tribe. The Dutch and Swedish arrived in the 1630s, and William Penn took ownership rights of the land in the 1680s. The city expanded quickly once bridges were built across the Schuylkill. West Philadelphia has been a gathering space for radical leftist movements since the 1960s. To this day there are all sorts of political, religious, and spiritual groups that reside here.
From meditation in public gardens to rallies against gun violence, West Philadelphia holds a wide variety of gatherings. In my interview with Tony Larsen, when asked why he thinks West Philadelphia is special, his first answer was “the trees." It sounds simple, but is true. Because nature and plants are valued throughout the neighborhood, people invest effort into preserving green spaces. This is often done collectively, through community gardens and community efforts to get involved in zoning conversations. Mutual aid takes many forms in West Philly.
Mutual aid:
Mutual aid is loosely defined as when people in communities prioritize each other and unite together for the common good. In my neighborhood, that means local organizations stepping up to provide food to people that need it, or fighting to keep green space that is threatened to become a prospective apartment building.
The main question that fueled my capstone was, “In what different ways do people build self-sufficient communities?” I wanted to investigate what it means to educate communities towards helping those in need.
Without mutual aid, healthy communities cannot exist, because they require systems in place to provide help if something goes wrong. I have watched this firsthand: at the start of the first Covid outbreak, neighborhood organizations, like Food Not Bombs, were able to keep providing supplies to people in dire circumstances before the city and federal governments were organized enough to send aid.
I have accumulated a list of local organizations worth supporting. These organizations build stability within our city communities and fight to have self sustaining neighborhoods that practice mutual aid.